Could this be 2019?

I had a disturbing dream last night. I’m sure the dream had something to do with the video I watched yesterday of high schoolers complaining about the new food requirements and fainting from lack of nourishment (YouTube video entitled “We Are Hungry”).

In my dream I was visiting a little girl in a hospital. I was trying to sneak her some food.

She had been born prematurely, with a body weight under 5 pounds. This put her in the position of not yet being a person. Until she could gain sufficient weight to be a viable living human as defined by the government, she was not allowed to have a given name or to leave the hospital. She was assigned only a number until her weight and height would satisfy government standards.

Because her mother was unable to nurse her, she had to be fed formula at first. The small amount of formula she received was regulated by the government. With the many regulations against child obesity, the amount of nourishment she received was severely limited. She couldn’t get enough to eat to grow enough to show up on the government growth charts.

The little girl in my dream was crawling. In addition to small amounts of formula, she was given food pellets in carefully measured quantities. Real food was not allowed as it required too much preparation. Real food was available only to viable humans.

The penalties for sneaking food into the hospital were horrible. I somehow knew that her father had been imprisoned for doing just that. Besides, food distribution was very carefully controlled. The government decided what you ate and how much you ate. Being overweight had harsher punishments than drug use or criticizing the government. Farmers markets and home gardens were a thing of the past. Everyone bought their calorie-controlled food with an EBT card in a government grocery store.

There was no realistic recourse in the courts. Since the government was now my advocate in all things, I couldn’t hire a private attorney. Lawyers who still had jobs had to work for either the executive branch or the judicial branch of the government. This wasn’t in my dream, but I assume police officers were no longer allowed to eat donuts.

I was tremendously discouraged. Gmail, the only email option, had become Government Mail, and all apps that might have been used to enlist help from others were distributed and monitored by the government. iTunes had become GTunes, and the iPad was now the GPad. The news media formally changed their name to GMedia, and private bloggers had disappeared.

Could my dream be a look into the future? Could it be 2019 and could Michelle Obama be the sitting president? I hope not. Pete